Since Warren’s daughter got married there have, of course, been enormous
technological advances that radically transform not only the possibilities for
surveillance but also our concepts of privacy, freedom, and autonomy, and
that threaten to continue to do so (Westin 1967 ; Gandy 1993 ; Lyon and Zureik
1996 ; Agre and Rotenberg 1998 ). These opportunities for monitoring people
apply equally to private households, to public spaces, and to surWng the
Internet. In discussions of the new ‘‘surveillance state,’’ the literature con-
stantly invokes both Bentham’s panopticon and Foucault’s interpretations of
it (Whitaker 1999 ; Foucault 1977 ).
The idea of informational privacy, however, also incorporates a further
element. At issue here is not only not wanting to have one’s phone tapped or
be kept under surveillance, but the more general point that people like to
keep the knowledge that others have of them under control and within limits
they can expect. This brings to light the deep-seated connection between
informational privacy and autonomy: people want to have control of their
own self-presentation; they use the information others have about them to
regulate their relationships and thus the roles they play in their various social
spaces. If everyone knew everything about everyone else, diVerentiated rela-
tions and self-presentations would no longer be possible, nor would auton-
omy and the freedom to determine one’s own life. As the German Federal
Constitutional Court argued as early as 1983 : ‘‘A person who cannot tell with
suYcient certainty what information concerning him in certain areas is
known to his social environment, or who is unable to assess in some measure
the knowledge of his communication partners, may be substantially restricted
in his freedom to make plans or take decisions in a self-determined way’’
(BVerfGE 65 , 1 ( 43 )).
My intention here is to provide just a brief sketch of the very diVerent
social contexts in which violations of informational privacy may coincide
with restrictions on freedom. Informational privacy is relevant, Wrst, in
friendships and love relationships, serving both as a protection of rela-
tionships and as protection within relationships. In some theories of
privacy, this even constitutes the very heart of privacy, ‘‘relational privacy’’
guaranteeing the opportunities for withdrawal that are constitutive for an
authentic life (Fried 1968 ; Rachels 1975 ). It is relevant, secondly, to the
electronic data interchange and data synchronization that are an inevitable
consequence of any purchase made over the Internet, the now vast
opportunities for data abuse in citizens’ social dealings with one another
(Whitaker 1999 ). In Europe, recent attempts to provide legislation,
new ways of thinking about privacy 705